Rose
by jeviennis
Summary: The Doctor doesn't like Rose, because like isn't the word.


Rose

If someone were to ask the Doctor what he liked about Rose Tyler, he wouldn't be able to give an answer. Not because there aren't enough adjectives in the world or enough pretentious comparisons to a summer's day, but because there is nothing he likes about her.

He loves everything about her.

'Like' would imply a friendship, a mutual acquaintance with each other, or a polite smattering of affection between pals, and that is not Rose Tyler. If someone were to ask him what he loved about her, he would probably kill them of old age before he even got halfway through his list.

Rose Tyler encompasses everything that the Doctor loves about the cosmos. She's beautiful, brave and she's so brilliantly flawed that she's practically flawless. When she stumbles around first thing in the morning, her hair has a kink down the right side, just below her fringe that makes her ear stick out, and she'll always make a comment under her breath about it, and he'll cringe inwardly because he doesn't understand how she can't see that she looks like perfection. When she sees something that would make a grown man lose faith in the world, she doesn't play the typical Englishman façade and pretend that she never saw; she acts like she gives a damn, whether that be crying with her head slightly to the left so that her fringe covers her face or getting so angry that he has to tell her to calm down or she'll rage her way into oblivion. When the Doctor says something to annoy her, she'll slump down in her seat and sulk, sometimes not talking for hours on end, but both of them know that in the end, he'll make a joke or tempt her with an exotic new land, and she'll crack that smile that he swears could win a Colgate award, and they'll be fine again, and he'll wonder how in God's name she managed to keep quiet for so long.

One of the Doctor's favourite things to do is watch Rose Tyler's face when he shows her a new world. He revels in the split second changes between awe and delight and incredulousness and joy that flit across her features when she looks down and sees that the grass isn't quite as green, or looks up and sees that the sky isn't quite same shade of blue. But what he loves most about it is when she turns to him with that expression on her face, that one that he's never really been able to read, and grabs his hand and pulls him forward and he counts his lucky stars that he's got two hearts, because her touch is like electricity and she stops one of them just by brushing him. But then it's all fine again, because in the next second she puts his head on his shoulder, and even though he thinks that it should just stop his heart further, or kill him completely, somehow it revives him, reinvigorates him, restores him, and he is a whole new man with a slight spring in his step and a bit more of a smile behind his tired eyes.

If Rose Tyler were a coward, she would be scared of every single thing that she's seen. Even the most harmless of creatures would have been that monster that lived under her bed or in her wardrobe, and she'd have turned and walked away from the want of a better life, because that was what mankind did. They hid from that which scared them, even if they whispered sweet tales of desire and promise, because that was human nature. But Rose Tyler seemed to know nothing of human nature, and so she was not a coward. She walked tall among things she knew nothing of and embraced that which was so extraordinary, because she wanted the magic. The glow that told her that maybe life wasn't quite so mundane. Rose Tyler was not a vessel of unfulfilled dreams, and to the Doctor, that made her the most magnificent being in the solar system.

But there was one thing that the Doctor loved most about Rose Tyler, more than the kink in the hair or the dignity in face of the unknown. She was, unequivocally, the kindest person that he had ever met. On the days where the ghosts of his past came flooding back into sight, he would sink to the floor or stumble backwards a little – something no one would notice, brush it off as a headache or a trip. But Rose Tyler knew that when the Doctor got headaches he put one hand to his temple, and when he tripped he'd squeak as he went down, so she knew that when he sank or stumbled, this was nothing so simple, so easy. She knew she wasn't the sharpest tool in the box and she knew that she'd never understand what had come to pass in the Doctor's lifetime, but more importantly, she knew that anyone, regardless of the number of hearts, needed another person. A confidant. Even through misty eyes or the gaps between his fingers, he'd know when she stepped slowly and silently towards him, angling her head just so he could a throb of light on her collarbone from the TARDIS console, and he knew when she looked down at him, because he would feel her gaze sweep over him, full of adoration and pride and devastation and tenderness all at once, and he'd see her drop slowly to her knees and put one hand on his face, and he wouldn't even need her to say anything to know that she was the one person in the vastness of the universe that he could trust more than he could trust himself.

However, if someone were to ask him if there was anything he hated about her, he'd have an answer to that.

He hates that he's stuck on one side of this damn wall, while she's on the other.


End file.
